I agree with this. It's why we've been pushing to have Zen (probably
with both the Deliciously Zen skin and the more plain "wireframe"
skin) included in addition to Themetas tic as the default theme. The
fact that there have been at least 4-5 completely distinct themes
built on Zen that change nothing but a CSS file is testament to the
fact that it is powerful, flexible, and easy to modify.

Right, again, that's what I was trying to say with my initial endorsement caveat. Was that the theme needs to be clean and well-built from the inside and easy to use like the Zen theme is.

It won't matter how pretty it is if it's guts are a mess that no themer can understand.

This is all without me having looked at the code. (I don't feel I'm the most qualified to make assessments of structure, for portability, like people I know are, Ted "m3averck".)

If there's resistance to putting in two "new" themes, then one of us
could probably easily port something like Bluemarine to Zen and
include it that way.

-Angie